In large institutional settings such as hospitals, the dispensing and delivery of drugs has become a time consuming process. In particular, sterile items, controlled medications, biological samples, and the like need to be prepared and transported in a secure environment while ensuring the safety of patients and hospital workers.
Transporting objects via pneumatic tubes is known to the art. Pneumatic delivery systems are used extensively for the rapid and efficient transportation of a wide variety of articles. These delivery systems are used in a number of business operations, including, but not limited to, banks, hospitals, office buildings, industrial plants, and transportation terminals for transporting a carrier containing objects from one location to another.
To send an object via a pneumatic tube, an object is placed within a carrier, which is then transported within enclosed pneumatic tubing by air under either positive or negative pressure to a desired destination. The interior of the closed tube and the outer dimension of the carrier form a seal so that the carrier can be propelled between the destinations by a vacuum or positive air pressure. These Pneumatic delivery systems typically comprise a number of substantially hermetically sealed tubes extending between locations in a building and a mechanism for selectively evacuating air from, or forcing air into, the tubes. In use, objects are placed in a carrier vessel, typically a substantially cylindrical housing, which is placed into the pneumatic tube transport system. The vessel is then propelled through the tube by creating a zone of relatively higher pressure on one side of the carrier vessel than on the other. This may be accomplished by creating a zone of negative pressure (e.g., a vacuum) in front of the vessel or by creating a zone of positive pressure behind the vessel.
One specific area of commerce, which currently uses the pneumatic tube for transporting materials, is the hospital or biomedical research/manufacturing industry. Pneumatic tube delivery systems have proven to be particularly useful for transporting blood samples, medicines, intravenous bags, viral samples or other biological or chemical matter within hospitals or laboratories. Some of the items transported may be highly addictive drugs (i.e. morphine) which need to be tightly controlled, or hazardous fluids or solids that need to be transported in a secure package to prevent spillage of the hazardous items during delivery.
In certain settings, the objects include containers housing fluids that need to be transported using the pneumatic tube transport system. For example, in the health care setting pneumatic tube transport systems are well adapted for transporting fluids such as laboratory samples, blood samples or other body fluids, or intravenous bags between areas of the building. However, when using pneumatic tube transport systems in the health care field, it is critical that the carrier vessels be suitable for transporting fluids. More particularly, it is necessary that the carrier vessels, upon closure, seal to provide substantially leak-proof containment of fluids, which may unwantedly spill from their primary containers into the vessel. Fluids, which spill from their primary containers inside the vessel, may leak from the vessel into the pneumatic tube posing a health risk and resulting in a risk that the pneumatic tubes may not properly function due to the presence of fluid in the system.
Current packaging systems utilize zip-lock bags, fold-over-type bags, wrapped in papers, newspapers, or placed in foam-lines pneumatic carriers to transport these items in such pneumatic tube systems. Moreover, urine-sample containers are placed in zip-lock bags and transported unprotected in these pneumatic carriers. As such, spillages are frequently seen contaminating products, carriers, and the systems, which carry these samples requiring costly clean-ups and down time in these pneumatic tube systems.
Thus, there is clearly a need for a system and method for safely and securely sealing material and transporting in a pneumatic tube carrier delivery system to protect users from spillage during transport of the material within the pneumatic tube carrier delivery system. There is also a need for a system and method for providing tracking of the sealed material in the pneumatic tube carrier delivery system to ensure the secure delivery of carrier contents to authorized end users.